Technology is now making cars as "unfamiliar and scary" as they were 100 years ago, writes Joseph B. White in the Wall Street Journal (2/10/10). Back then, cars were scary because they were mechanical beasts, "with controls operated by cables and levers and shafts," oh, my. Now they're scary because they've gone "electro-digital" with "electronic and software systems that control the flow of gasoline" and brake pedals that "send signals to computer-controlled systems."

Hybrids "can't function without computer controlled systems that tell the brake system when to capture energy to regenerate the batteries, or when to just stop the car." This is scary, obviously, because "where there's software there's often bugs." Ford, for example, "is telling customers it plans to preprogram certain Fusion hybrids to fix a glitch that can cause consumers to feel they have lost stopping power. Toyota says it is moving toward a similar software fix for braking complaints lodged against the 2010 Toyota Prius."

As Joseph points out, it may be reassuring that problems with the gas and breaks can be remedied by a software patch. But you've got to wonder if you can "trust a car that could malfunction because of some random software misfire, the way ... company-issued laptops are wont to do." And as David Champion, head of vehicle testing at Consumer Reports notes, "We are in the learning curve on these systems." Not only are they a mystery to the average driver, but when they fail, they "can be impossible even for experts to diagnose."

"Our goal has always been to overlay the real world and the digital world," says Keith Lee, founder of Booyah, in a Wall Street Journal article by Tomio Geron (3/3/10). Booyah offers a mobile phone app called MyTown that lets users build a virtual city based on the buildings they visit in real life. MyTown claims to be the largest of a growing number of so-called "check-in" apps that use "GPS technology to pinpoint a user's location" and share the information with friends.

So far, MyTown has attracted "one million users, with as many as four million check-ins a day." Some see it as part of an emerging phase in social media, letting friends tell friends not only what they're up to, but also where they're up to it. An app called Foursquare enables this "by clicking on a location listed in the Foursquare mobile-phone application, usually a restaurant or bar or such." It is "built to be addictive" by including a game in which "users get points for going to different places, and compete to be at the top of the leader board among their friends."

Gowalla, yet another check-in app, specializes in "places that are not businesses, such as a cliff above a remote beach." And Causeworld, via Shopkick, Inc., "allows people to 'win' virtual money that they can donate to real-life charities." Kraft and Citigroup are among the companies making donations, and Shopkick takes a cut. Albert Wenger, a Foursquare investor, sees checking-in as a companion to other forms of social media, like blogging and Flickr. "Sharing is not a short-term trend that's going to reverse itself," he says. "That's here to stay."

If Google ran a radio station, Michael Dougherty thinks it would be just like the kind he is launching, reports Jefferson Graham in USA Today (3/3/10). Michael, a former Microsoft exec, co-founded Jelli, "a website and syndicated radio format. It's a new twist on all-request radio -- except these requests are logged online, on the Jelli dot-net website. The songs that get the most votes get played on the air."

Gartner analyst Mike McGuire thinks this is a great idea: "It's a way to display your affection for a band. It's for someone who wants to tell everybody and anybody, 'By the way, AC/DC is the most awesome classic rock band ever.'" However, Kurt Hanson, editor of a radio industry newsletter, dismisses Jelli as "a high-tech gimmick" that's really no different than traditional radio request lines. He also thinks only a "tiny subset" of listeners would participate in it.

The model involves syndicating the all-request format to stations around the country at no charge, "in exchange for two minutes of commercial airtime each day that Jelli gets to sell." So far, Jelli is working with stations in San Francisco, Philadelphia and Las Vegas. Donovan Short plans to add Jelli to three stations in Montana and Wyoming, and sees the format as "the power of the group." However, Aaron Axelson, who's been testing Jelli on Live 105 in San Francisco, says the crowds pretty much pick the hits, although the result is perhaps a bit more eclectic than traditional top 40.

Josh Frye is hoping it might not be long before his chicken poop is worth more than his chickens, reports Brian Winter in USA Today (2/11/10). At Josh's West Virginia farm, the chicken poop "is fed into a large, experimental incinerating machine. Out comes a charcoal-like substance known as "biochar" -- which is not only an excellent fertilizer, but also helps keep carbon in the soil instead of letting it escape into the atmosphere, where it acts as a greenhouse gas."

So far, Josh is churning out "as much as 9,000 pounds of biochar per day" and "has sold nearly $1,000 worth of biochar to farmers as far away as New Jersey." The process isn't new; it was "used in agriculture several centuries ago by Amazon Indians," using sources other than chicken poop (e.g., wood and switchgrass). The key is to heat the poop "in an extremely low-oxygen environment -- a process that produces no smoke and no smell."

Originally, Josh was mainly interested in using the heat to warm his chicken houses. "I thought it was crazy at first, and my wife still thinks it's nuts," he says. But now he's seeing dollar signs, and thinks he can sell "high-quality biochar for $1 a pound." How does he know the quality? He puts a little bit in his mouth. "If it's pasty and hard to swallow, then it's impure," says Josh, adding, "There's big-time time people ... looking at this."

Anders Wilhelmson thinks he may have a solution to the toilet crisis in Kenya's urban slums, reports Sindya N. Bhanoo in the New York Times (3/2/10). Anders is a Swedish architect, professor and entrepreneur who found Kenyan "slum dwellers ... collected their (business) in a plastic bag and disposed of it by flinging it, calling it a 'flyaway toilet' or 'helicopter' toilet." He also noticed that, "despite being densely populated," these urban slums "had open spaces where waste could be buried."

His solution is "the Peepoo, an environmentally-friendly alternative that he is confident will turn a profit." The Peepoo is made of biodegradable plastic, and after use "the bag can be knotted and buried, and a layer of urea crystals breaks down the waste into fertilizer, killing off disease-producing pathogens." As Anders points out, "Not only is it sanitary, they can reuse this to grow crops."

Anders expects to sell the Peepoo for two or three cents each, "comparable to the cost of an ordinary plastic bag." According to the United Nations, "an estimated 2.6 billion people, or about 40 percent of the earth's population, do not have access to a toilet." The World Toilet Organization says the "market for low-cost toilets in the developing world is about a trillion dollars." Following a year of tests in Kenya and India, Anders plans to begin mass producing the Peepoo this summer.

3M's chief executive, George Buckley, is promoting a pyramid scheme, report Dana Mattioli and Kris Maher in the Wall Street Journal (3/1/10). No, not that kind of pyramid scheme. George's scheme does involve investments, but it's more about innovation. His idea is that, in a bad economy, research and development should focus on the bottom of the innovation "pyramid" instead of the top. This means improving products "with tweaks and snips" instead of taking aim at big, breakthrough, glamorous innovations.

George thinks that this is actually more challenging, that it's more difficult to "make a breakthrough for next to nothing." His example is his drive "to make cheaper respiratory masks." He explains: "I wanted the manufacturing process that made these respirators [to have] a quadrupling in speed and efficiency." He said this drove his people crazy, but he managed to convince them that "the intellectual challenge is making a real innovation that costs next to nothing." But he says that once they got it, and saw how it could grow the business, they liked it.

George also says it's important to let people know that their work is secksy, particularly if they don't think it is. He says, for example, he told the head of 3M's abrasives business that there's no reason abrasives can't be secksy. "I think it's those simple comments to people who have been convinced over a period of years that they are unimportant," says George. Meanwhile, he's also reduced his R&D budget by 8 percent, but "kept it steady as a percentage of revenue at 5.6 percent." He says he cut back on "salespeople, and in some cases advertising and merchandising" to protect R&D.

The next great innovation in adhesive tape may come "from an unlikely source: the gecko," reports Arianne Cohen in the New York Times (2/25/10). "Geckos have millions of microscopic hairs on their toes, each with hundreds of tips that adhere to surfaces, with no residue left behind," says Kellar Autumn, a Lewis & Clark College biology professor. "Their hairs can stay attached indefinitely." Kellar, along with colleagues at the University of California, did research that has resulted in "a prototype for tape based on gecko adhesion."

Kellar says gecko tape is really strong -- so strong, in fact, "that when they tested it, he was able to stick his 50-pound, 8-year-old daughter to a window with it." Presumably, child protective services took appropriate action. Some 50 patents have now been filed, in any case, and hopes are that gecko tape may soon be giving duct tape a run for its money. "Imagine hanging a picture on the wall with a reusable gecko tape that doesn't leave a residue or damage the wall -- it's like a thumbtack but doesn't leave a hole," says Kellar.

He hopes that gecko tape will be on the market in "three to five years." It most certainly would be an improvement over duct tape, which does have its charms but "is difficult to remove and leaves a sticky residue." Other options include painter's, flue and gaffer tape, which are easy to remove and don't leave a residue. Then there's X-Treme tape, which "doesn't stick to anything but itself" and is ideal for pipe leaks. Priced at about six bucks "for 10 feet, it's not cheap, but it is heat resistant and can stretch to three times its length." But hold tight, says Kellar Autumn because, "We're really close to gecko tape."

Last Friday at Madison Square Garden it was Eric Clapton's show, but Jeff Beck stole it. This was quite a feat considering that the overwhelming majority of the audience was there to see Mr. Clapton's part of the double bill. Relatively few were likely familiar with any of the songs on Beck's set list -- except his jaw-dropping cover of the Beatles' "Day in the Life." For some reason he didn't play Beck's Bolero, which many people do know. He never got around to Hi Ho Silver Lining, either, which was a little disappointing.

But he certainly ended his opening, hour-long set with many more Madison Square Garden fans than he had when he started. I'm among them. At first, the sold-out crowd offered polite response, and few were exactly riveted. Lots of opening-act milling about. But by the end of his set, much of the audience was on its feet, in back-to-back ovations. Anyone who has heard Jeff Beck play will know why this is, and everyone else should look him up, probably starting with his otherwordly Beatles cover (video).

Jeff Beck doesn't sing because he really can't (video). So, he makes his guitar sing instead and his sound is absolutely anthropomorphic. He manages this, in part, by playing with his thumb instead of a pick, never letting go of the whammy bar, and lavishing attention above the 14th fret. His band, a power trio, thunders behind him while a small orchestra furiously adds flourishes. Stunning. Eric Clapton, with nothing to prove, did a nice job, too, with a laid-back set of hits and blues standards. But if you didn't know who was the famous, successful one, the one people call "God," you'd have been sure it was Jeff Beck, not Eric Clapton.

Innovative supermarkets tap into emotional and functional desires.  By Randi Moore. (more)

In Denver, Brooklyn and Houston, eco-preneurs are finding eco-community in shared eco-workspaces, reports Sindya N. Bhanoo in the New York Times (2/15/10). "It's certainly different from Wall Street, where it was all about what you did," says Jennie Nevin. "This is all about what we can do." Jennie is co-founder with two partners of Green Spaces, "a co-working space in TriBeCa that is home to environmentally focused start-up companies." She's opened another branch in Denver, and "plans to expand to Los Angeles as well."

As Jennie explains: "The green movement is about collaborating and working together ... The idea here is to create a hub." Jack Guttman has a similar concept with Green Desk, in Brooklyn, where he rents single desks for $199 per month. Having sold out his initial run of 80 desks, Jack expanded to a total of 500. He's now adding another 150 at a second location. He's also planning to "install solar panels, offer loaner bicycles, build a rooftop garden and open a space where its tenants and other eco-conscious retailers can sell their merchandise."

In Houston, Jeff Kaplan offers a similar eco-concept with New Living, which he operates above his home-furnishings store. "The movement is so new that we need to learn together," he says. Others note a sense of pride in basing their eco-businesses in a place where "plants are everywhere, the sunlight streams in, and everyone washes his or her own coffee cups." In some instances, the offices double as a laboratory: At Green Spaces, Eric and Mark Dalski have planted an interior wall of hydroponic plants to test the concept for a client. "Certainly this would be harder to do elsewhere," says Eric.